Keep an Eye on Competitors using Google Search String

There is no such thing as new business hence, the need to channel your inner James Bond. Starting a business that people are already into can be very stressful to push forward as a marketer, that is why a lot of digital marketers take their first strategy as carrying out a competitive research. there are free tools that can be used to carry out qualitative and quantitative data about your competitors that will be helpful in creating a digital marketing strategy and one of them is the Google Search String.

Benefit of Competitive research

Knowing Competitors strength and weakness: carrying out a competitive analysis exposes you to your competitor’s strength and lapses in the market will be helpful in mapping out your marketing plan.

Marketing Trends: when you carry out a competitive research, you get updated on changes in your market and thus exposing market opportunities you need to tap into.

Product Improvement: Products are rapidly developed to meet consumers needs. You need to key into this. competitive research helps you understand these improvements and other unique improvements that can drive in more sales.

Marketing: competitive research also helps you identify key features that can improve your marketing plan. If your competition is successful in selling their product, then they are definitely doing their marketing right.

How to Use Google Search Strings

Google Search String is a line of a command typed into the search engine to find out a specific information. There are three major Google search strings that matter when carrying out competitive research and they are

Site:

This search string tells you how many pages your competitor’s website has. This comes in very handy for people who want to build a website but have no idea on how many pages they need. Using this search string, Google specifically shows you the website pages of your competitors and their titles. On the google search engine interface, type in the search string followed by competitor’s website without any space e.g site:website.com. Google will show you all the pages on the website.

Link:

Link search string shows up the result of other links and affiliates that link to your website. This search string come in handy when you are looking for your competitor’s backlinks or outbound links. The search string shows you several websites, blogs or affiliates programs including apps linking to your competitor’s website.

To use this search string, head on to your Google search engine interface and type the following; link:website.com. Remember there shouldn’t be any space between the search string and your competitor’s website. It is important to note that the first page of the search result normally comes out accurate, but the rest of the result pages can be inaccurate.

Related:

This search string comes in handy for those who do not have an idea of all their competitors. The search string is used to find out the websites that are similar or related to yours. For example, you want to start a business and you only have an idea of one major competitor. You will want to also find out other competitors out there who aren’t popular but offer the same services as yours. Using this search string you type the competitor website without any space; e.g: related:website.com.

Remember, when using the search strings, you need to be specific. Do not add space when using it and do not add www. when adding the website.

Using AI as a creative marketing tool

When speaking about AI in marketing, the focus is usually on how AI can effectively process big data to make predictions, help marketers save time on repetitive tasks, or drive conclusions from big chunks of data but marketing is not only about crunching data — it is also about creativity. So, the question is: how will using AI as a creative marketing tool help marketing specialists complete creative tasks in the future?

Curating photos

Ever wondered why some images are more eye-catching than others? EyeEm created an AI that is able to decide if a picture is aesthetically pleasing by analyzing its content. The technology can even offer users a personalized ranking based on specific visual requirements. It can also generate a caption for each image so the user doesn’t have to bother with creating a keyword list.

Creating art

There is an artistic AI available to users as a mobile app. Pikazo is a free app that uses a deep neural network to create art. The AI combines two images to make one, really cool image. A user simply selects a photo to paint and chooses how to paint it then the machine does the rest. This is an excellent tool for marketers looking to create interesting photos for ads and social content.

Composing music

Jukedeck is an App whose AI can dynamically compose music in different styles, so users can easily create audio tracks for their company videos or even for personal use. The music composed by Jukedeck’s AI is surprisingly indistinguishable from human-composed music. The tool is great for marketers who would otherwise resort to using a generic stock jingle.

With the few examples above, it is clear that AI is capable of solving a vast amount of tasks, including creative tasks.

With the development in the technology world in the twenty-first century, new job opportunities that no one would have imagined decades ago, have been created. Thanks to the Internet and app developers, those skilled in digital marketing, search engine optimization, social media management, content marketing etc, are now the belles of the ball. But among all these, the hottest demand is for a social media manager.

Being a social media manager is not limited only to the management of a company or an organization’s social media platforms. Social media managers are responsible for developing and implementing marketing strategies for businesses’ social media sites. A social media manager is a marketer, brand manager and to an extent, a public relations personnel. He/She creates and implements a social media plan which involves; brand development, identifying the target market, setting clear objectives/realistic goals, visual design and web development strategy, content marketing strategy, promotion strategy, engagement strategy, conversion, and measurement & analysis to establish ROI.

5 Team Management Tools to boost Productivity

Are you a Project Manager or coordinator? Do you have a team you are in charge of? Then, this article is for you. Communication is of utmost importance to the success of any given project, and it is arguable that ensuring that clear communication pathways are established between all team members and clients is the most important role of a PM. Hence, we’ve brought you 6 team management apps and tools that can streamline your communication pathways and supercharge your productivity.

1. Trello

A simple to use visual-based team management tool, the interface is extremely intuitive, and easy to grasp in not more than 5 or 10 minutes with only the minimal amount of instruction. Trello’s main function, is to organise projects throughout their various stages or iterations. Users can create boards, and on those boards, they can create lists, and on those lists they can create cards. Cards contain information and attachments – files, documents, images etc. As each task is completed, the card can be moved from one list to the next, so all members can view its progress.

2. Realtime BoardRealtime Board is the perfect tool for helping teams to brainstorm and communicate ideas. Every member of a particular Board can write notes, draw sketches and create diagrams – and communications can be made in real-time.

3. Droptask

This tool presents the user with ‘drops’. For each task – or stage of a task – a ‘drop’ can be created, colour coded, and then marked as in progress, on hold or completed. Furthermore, subtasks can be added to any individual task, comments can be left and files can be attached.

4. Slack

With Slack, all messages can be posted in one place, and access to all chats can be gained from both desktop and mobile devices. It’s also possible to segment chats so that communication can take place between only a few team members, or between client and PM.

5. Toggl

This a web app that monitors and tracks the time spent on various projects and allows users to analyse productivity. It monitors how long employees are spending on each project. Timesheets can be generated at any time, and, at the end of each month a comprehensive sheet detailing the precise hours of work can be easily formed and forwarded onto clients with an accompanying invoice.

How to Write Long-Form Content

Writing long-form content is a confusing and if we’re being totally honest, a pain in the ass process especially if you don’t know where to start or how to go about it. To help you tell your story from beginning to end and make absolute sense, here’s how to write long-form content.

Create an outline

Creating an outline will help to keep you on track from the start and give you some direction when you’re feeling lost as the actual writing process plays out. Your outline should act as a road map that walks you through each section of your piece and ensures that nothing important is overlooked.

Brainstorm bullet points

So, your outline is done and dusted. Now, you need to think up a set of bullet points for each section of your content that highlight the most important pieces of information you want your readers to learn. Once you’ve built upon your bulleted lists, you may find that some of the other parts of your outline aren’t any longer needed. On the other hand, you might find that your content needs more in-depth information than initially planned.

Plan your format

While you’re creating your content, think about how you want to present it to your readers. If your content includes a lot of statistics or historical information, you may want to lead each section with a stunning photo or short educational video that makes your audience want to read the content to the end.

Eliminate all redundancies

After you’ve created your outline and your bulleted ideas, read through everything and weed out any ideas that overlap each other by combining them in some way. This will allow you to minimise the inclusion of redundancies and ensure that every piece of content you do include is relevant to the overall topic at hand.

In conclusion, it is important to research your target audience and put yourself in their shoes during your planning session. Read competitor blogs and check out consumer or company forums to gain some insight into what your potential readers expect to learn when reading your content.